About me

My name is Amy and I've been blogging on CDG since 2005. A mama of two living in Colorado, I'm passionate about attachment parenting, health and wellness, green living, essential oils, urban homesteading and unschooling/home schooling.

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Month: June 2008

This weekend I finally took advantage of the box of Natural Instincts Cinnaberry that has been sitting on my counter for the past three weeks and colored my hair (again). It’s a temporary color (cuz I’m non-committal like that) that washes out after 28 shampoos. I’m thinking of getting a shorter (fun? funky?) cut to go with it and some new glasses as well. I have an eye appointment coming up this week and went scouting out specs this weekend. I’m trying my best to deviate from my usual brown glasses (which is what I almost always seem to get – if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?) and have a purple frame in mind. We’ll see if I go through with it or not. There’s also a black and green frame that I rather like and a couple of (yes) brown ones too.

What kind of hairstyle do you think I should go with? Send me links to pics if you have suggestions. Maybe I’ll put together 2 or 3 styles that I like and then post a poll and let the internets decide my next hair style. Ya think?

Here I am with the new shades of Cinnaberry hair. I’m a red-head. (For the record, it doesn’t look as red here as it does in person. I’m surprised every time I see myself in the mirror.)

I took a slew of pics on Sunday, hoping to get something worthy of sharing for my Best Shot Monday. While most of them didn’t turn out the way I had hoped, this one grabbed my attention. I just love the look of adoration and pure joy in Ava’s eyes.

And I thought this one was pretty sweet too. :)

See more Best Shot Monday posts over at Slurping Life (for this week only).

It’s time for another check-in on the Quickie 5-minute Shower Challenge. We’re up to 100 participants now! Woohoo! Thank you to everyone who is giving this challenge a try and to those of you who’ve linked to it on your blog. :)

So, how are you doing with it now that we are almost a month in? Those of you who were struggling to decrease your shower time, has turning off the water while you lather up or shampoo your hair helped? Or turning off the water while you shave? At the last check-in post, a couple people mentioned the “no ‘poo” (no shampoo) technique and, for those of you who are interested in learning more about it, I might have a guest blogger write about it while I’m on vacation.

I confess I was getting lazy and had been pushing the 5-minute limit (or going over) the last week so I started turning off the water while I shampoo my hair and lather up my body and that makes such a huge difference. Now I get done in under 5 minutes easily.

Two more months to go. You’re doing a great job so far! Hope you will hang in there with me. And if you haven’t signed up yet, but want to give it a go, leave me a comment and I’ll add you to the list. :)

About nine months after I had my first child, I went (with the kiddo in tow) to my first Mothers Acting Up meeting. It was my first foray, at least post-children, into an organized activist group. While the timing wasn’t right for me to become a regular member, I gleaned a piece of knowledge from that meeting that I think will always stay with me. That is that mothers as a whole are a very, very large group, and if they use their power for good, they can become a force to be reckoned with.

That little gem has stuck with me over the years especially as I blog. Once I became a mom, specifically a stay at home mom, I had more time to think about the things in the world that I wanted to make better and the ways that I could make a difference, no matter how small, in the life of my child or the life of another mother or child. That was actually my motivation behind starting my blog in the first place. I came to realize that, in the words of Edward Everett Hale, “I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do.”

I often think about all of the power we as women and we as mothers have and wish there was an easy way we could harness it. Thanks to access to the Internet, getting involved and harnessing that power is easier now than ever before. If you are looking for a way to affect some change for the better in your world or the lives of children around the world, chances are there is an organization out there that’s right for you.

… is working to bring together millions of people who share a common concern about the need to build a more family-friendly America. Started in May of 2006, MomsRising has gained over 140,000 citizen members and is rapidly growing. More than 85 national and state organizations have signed on to be aligned with MomsRising.

Our members are bringing important motherhood and family issues to the forefront of the country’s awareness. We are working to create both cultural and legislative change. It is time to break the logjam that has been holding back family-friendly legislation for decades and to advance workplace policies that will support families.

MomsRising offers easy entry into citizen advocacy and is bringing the power of online organizing to motherhood and family issues.

…exists to inspire and mobilize mothers (and others) to advocate on behalf of the world’s children.
MAU inspires, educates and engages mothers â€” a gigantic force to be reckoned withâ€” to prioritize children in our corporate and public policies. MAU believes that when mothers lead, generations of global citizens will follow.

…The voice for all the children of America. The Children’s Defense Fundâ€™s Leave No Child BehindÂ® mission is to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start, and a Moral Start in life and successful passage to adulthood with the help of caring families and communities.

CDF provides a strong, effective voice for all the children of America who cannot vote, lobby, or speak for themselves.

We pay particular attention to the needs of poor and minority children and those with disabilities.

When Ava was just shy of a year old, my husband with Ava on his shoulders and I walked in the annual Mothers Acting Up Mother’s Day parade on the Pearl Street Mall in Boulder, Colo. The parade was followed by a rally in front of the courthouse and it was a pretty powerful event to be a part of as I celebrated my very first Mother’s Day as a mom. As the mothers (and others) walked in the parade we chanted, “Ain’t no power like the power of the mama and the power of the mama don’t stop.” Remember that, mamas. The power is ours for the taking. We are women. Hear us roar.

Edited to add: I’ve received more responses than I thought I would and will have no problem filling two weeks’ worth of vacation. So thank you all for your replies, but I’m not going to be accepting any more guest bloggers at this time (though I may do this again in the future). I will be getting in touch with everyone who emailed me to let them know if/when I can use their post. Thank you!

The fam and I are going on vacation for two weeks at the end of July/beginning of August and rather than try to kill myself blogging in advance or committing to blogging while on holiday, I’m asking for guest bloggers to help fill the void. If you blog about topics that you think would be of interest to readers of my blog – attachment parenting, birth activism, maternal health, natural family living, green living, gardening, environmentalism, feminism, photography, etc. – now is a great chance to get your blog a bit of exposure. :) I receive about 18,000 page impressions per month and have over 500 Feedburner subscribers, so I think you stand a good chance of picking up some new readers.

If you are interested in being considered for a guest blogging spot here on Crunchy Domestic Goddess, send me an email – amygeekgrl AT gmail DOT com with “Guest blogger” in the subject line – with a link to your blog (and send me a brief intro too if I’m not familiar with you or your blog). If you know what you’d like to post about (it can be an old post of yours if you prefer), please let me know that too and I’ll get back to you in a week or two to let you know if/when I will need your post. I’ve never done this before so I have no idea what kind of response I will get, but I’m excited to give it a go.

Try as I might to lead a green lifestyle as much as possible, I sometimes fall short. I think some people might get the impression that I live by the green book and, while I appreciate the vote of confidence, I want you to know that I am not all green, all the time. Today I’m confessing my dirty little secret.

Although Ava’s preschool is about four blocks from our house, I drive there almost every time. Awful, right? I know! It’s something I feel badly about and I’m actually trying to do better and walk more often. The main reason I choose to drive most days is because I don’t feel we have the time to walk there. I’m a habitually late person as it is (doh, you just got another confession out of me), and after you add getting two kids ready into the mix as well, I fall flat on my face. And there are some mornings (and some afternoons with naps) where I let Julian sleep in until the last possible moment, then get him up, put him in the car and off we go.

Now that it’s summer I have no weather excuses (other than when it gets too hot! *wink*), I am working on it and trying to do better about walking. Maybe I need to set a goal of walking at least one of the three days to start off and then increase it from there. In fact, I think that’s exactly what I will do. Can I get an “E” for effort? ;)